'Middle class' means $80k-$150k, San Francisco mayor says

[Newsjock]

Source:Valleywag

Ed Lee is the mayor of San Francisco by the grace of that city's deep-pocketed technologists. He continues to return the favor in both deeds and rhetoric: a new interview with Time has Lee explaining that his city's middle class isn't like yours:

We might have a broader range of defining the middle class, as compared to maybe Oakland or San Jose. I'm talking maybe $80,000 to $150,000. I don't think we paid attention, as a city, historically, to that level of income earners. I think we missed some steps there … There's always the potential, that as we're building a strong economy, that we could trip over that success.

... As the San Francisco Examiner points out, however, Lee's pretty far off: "The most-recent U.S. Census Bureau figures peg the median income in San Francisco at roughly $73,000. That means more than half of earners here aren't fitting the mayor's middle-class definition."

Why would you ever admit your city's middle class is shriveling up when you can just call something else the middle class? This also, conveniently, pegs San Francisco's burgeoning junior techie class as the new middle class—the employees of the men who got Lee the job can now be rebranded as America's most sacred demographic. There's not a politician in the union that'll speak out against initiatives for the middle class, which means Lee can directly serve his donor demo.

Read more: http://valleywag.gawker.com/sf-mayor-middle-class-means-earning-80-000-to-150-00-1513372388

[Auggie]

1. Lee's going to regret that

[Aerows]

2. San Francisco is an expensive city to live in, though

It would probably take 3 full time jobs at McDonald's just to have a place to live at minimum wage.

[Starry Messenger]

3. I wonder what the BART workers who were accused of being grossly

overpaid at 80k think of this newfound wisdom of Mayor Lee's?

[The Magistrate]

4. He is Right, Sir

People need to get over this ludicrous belief that, by and large, they are 'middle class', and understand and accept they are working class people.

What this country had once ( and for a fairly brief period, at that ) was a prosperous working class, many members of which could manage to live in a manner which approximated that of the lower reaches of the professional and small owner class. When this seduced them into turning against working class institutions and attitudes, and 'identifying upwards', this working class prosperity was destroyed, leeched away to the present state of powerlessness, both economic and political, which afflicts workers today, and unfortunately, for the foreseeable future....